Good questions, actually, very good questions, NW:
> Wow, we can't shift gears from a box maker to an IT enterprise organization type of
> analysis. Wonder if we know enough? Wonder if it is just more comfortable to compare
> ourselves to box makers. It is a more simple task. Perhaps we know we can beat them
> in the long run. Perhaps we are afraid to compare our strategies with an IBM. Maybe
> we don't know enough about IBM to make any meaningful comparisons.
I have been away myself but am unable to catch-up on the postings I missed since last weekend [still away but using a friend's telephone line for a bit].
I've been watching the unfolding of technology since I saw the prototype of the IBC PC at a trade fair in the late 1970s. Then I was at a college that got one of the original IBM grants--IBM XT's (8088s) with HUGE, 10 meg drives, more space than anyone could imagine filling. Without going through the whole history here, IBM started to falter, going from a high of around 150/share down, down, down [I'm taking about the mid-80s here]. IBM was too huge, to internally clumsy in the new IT age. Apple was flying and a rinky-dink 'clone,' Compaq, that none of the big investment firms (i.e. Merrill Lynch, E. F. Hutton, Smith Barney) followed started to pick-up sales. When CPQ was the first to come out with the seemingly impossible--the 386--it started its climb which really has not stopped. Per one of my earlier postings to Ed, when the 386 came out CPQ was selling for about 14/share.
For people like me who have watched things develop, not necessarily for investment purposes [for me, it was originally a fascination with human progress], any comparison with IBM is time to groan. IBM, in my mind, is a hippo trying to compete with a gazel in a 100 meter dash. CPQ becoming the IBM for the new millenium? Please pass me the smelling salts.
Lynn |
